ohmidog!

A Memphis police officer remains hospitalized after being struck last week by a shotgun blast intended for a dog.

Officer Willie Bryant is a member of a multi-jurisdictional gang  task force that was serving a drug-related warrant at a  home in north Memphis.

He was wearing a bulletproof vest when the shot — intended for a Cane Corso police said was charging at officers — struck him in the back last Thursday.

Two men inside the home were arrested and charged with possessing a handgun during attempted commission of a felony, and possessing crack cocaine and marijuana with intent to sell.

The dog, along with three others, were later picked up by Memphis Animal Services.

When police entered the home, two dogs — a pit bull and a Cane Corso — were inside, James Rogers, administrator of Memphis Animal Services, told the Commercial Appeal. The Corso was loose and the pit bull was in a kennel.

Police say the loose dog charged at them, leading officer Byron Willis to fire his weapon. The dog was not struck, and apparently, after the shot was fired, didn’t cause problems requiring officers to use lethal force .

That dog, the pit bull, and two more Cane Corsos in the backyard of the property were taken in by animal control.

Bryant, 32, who has been on the force for nine years, was rushed to a hospital, where he remains in critical condition. Willis, 43, who has been with the force since July, was been placed on leave pending an investigation.

During a search of the home, officers found crack cocaine, three body armor vests, and five handguns, police said.

“Dogs, armed parties, you never know what you are going to encounter when you kick a door in,” Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said. “We have to make life or death decisions, not only about our lives, but about other people’s lives, in less than a second’s notice.”

The Humane Society of the United States has released a report calling on the American Kennel Club to protect dogs from abuses at puppy mills.

The report accuses the AKC of “pandering to the interests of large-scale, commercial breeding facilities,” even though ”smaller-scale, high-quality breeders” make up the majority of its membership.

Numerous puppy mill operators who have been charged with animal cruelty have been selling AKC registered puppies and some of them even passed AKC inspections, the report notes.

“The American Kennel Club bills itself as ‘The Dog’s Champion,’  but our report shows a pattern of activity that is entirely at odds with that self-description,” said Wayne Pacelle, HSUS president and CEO.

“The AKC has opposed more than 80 bills and proposals in the last five years that would have implemented common-sense, humane standards of care at large-scale breeding facilities. We are shocked that a group that should be standing shoulder to shoulder with us is constantly lined up with the puppy mill industry.”

The report is based on information uncovered during HSUS-assisted raids of puppy mills,  AKC  “alerts” sent to breeders, materials published on AKC’s website, and AKC’s lobbying activities over the past five years.

In just the past six months, AKC-registered dogs were among those removed from three puppy mills in raids conducted by authorities in North Carolina, HSUS says.

In 2012 alone, AKC asked its supporters to oppose laws in several states that would have required puppy producers to comply with basic care standards; legislation in three states that would have prevented the debarking of dogs without a medical reason; an ordinance in a Tennessee town designed to prevent dogs from being left in hot cars; a Rhode Island state bill to prevent people from chaining or crating a dog for more than 14 hours a day; and a Louisiana state bill that would have prevented breeding facilities from keeping dogs in stacked, wire-floored cages.

The HSUS report discloses that some puppy mills that had been inspected by AKC but were still the subject of law enforcement-led rescues – with their operators later convicted of animal cruelty based on the poor conditions of their dogs.

Most recently, AKC has been lobbying breeders to oppose a proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture rule that would regulate Internet puppy sellers under the federal Animal Welfare Act.

The HSUS report calls on AKC to distance itself from the large-scale, commercial dog-breeding industry and return to its original focus of representing small,  responsible breeders who have the welfare of their dogs as their top priority.

Another hunter has been shot by his own hunting dog.

Billy E. Brown, 78, was on a hunting trip near Wesley Chapel, Florida, when his dog triggered a loaded rifle. He was shot in the thigh and remains hospitalized, in critical condition, after surgery.

Authorities said Brown and a fellow hunter were driving down a rough road in a pickup truck, with Brown’s dog, Eli, sitting between them. Eli got excited and bumped a Browning .308-caliber rifle, which discharged.

Brown is general manager and executive vice president of the Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative.

Just over a week ago, a duck hunter in Utah was shot when his dog triggered a 12-gauge shotgun resting in his boat.

A four-day-old child dragged out of his crib and into the yard by the family dog remained in critical condition yesterday at University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington.

Michael Smith and his wife Chrissie say when they checked on their baby Monday afternoon, he was not in his crib.

Smith told the Associated Press he headed to the family’s wooded, two-acre backyard, knowing that Dakota, a mixed breed described as a “Native American Indian Dog,” had a reputation for stealing household items and depositing them there.

Smith said when he found the dog, it was treating the baby, named Alexander James Smith, as a puppy and wasn’t being vicious.

Despite that, the infant suffered two collapsed lungs, a skull fracture, broken ribs and cuts and bruises.

Jessamine County chief deputy sheriff Allen Peel said no charges had been filed, but the case remains under investigation. He said he expects the dog, named Dakota, to be destroyed by animal control, which took him into custody Monday.

Smith said the 4-year-old was one of three dogs the family had owned since they were puppies and he had no history of aggression or problems with Smith’s two other children from a previous marriage.

The debate raging here on ohmidog! – and in the rest of the world, too — just had a little more fuel thrown on it: A new British study says dominance-based dog training techniques such as those espoused by Cesar Millan are a waste of time and may make dogs more aggressive.

Researchers from the University of Bristol’s Department of Clinical Veterinary Sciences, after studying dogs for six months, conclude that, contrary to popular belief, dogs are not trying to assert their dominance over their canine or human “pack” and aren’t motivated by maintaining their place in the pecking order.

One of the scientists behind the study, Dr. Rachel Casey, in an interview with ABC News, said the blanket assumption that every dog is motivated by some innate desire to control people or other dogs is “frankly ridiculous.”

Read more »

A woman who refused to leave her burning apartment without her dachsund remained in critical condition in a Houston hospital yesterday.

Relatives say Claudia Harris was cooking Saturday when the fire started inside her unit at the Hearthwood Apartments near Reliant Stadium. The landlord tried to get her out, but she wouldn’t leave without first finding her dachsund, Minnie, TV station KHOU in Houston reported.

“I’m not surprised that she would do something like that because I know how she feels about this dog and she will risk her own life for this dog,” said Charisse Harris, the victim’s daughter. “She treats the dog like a person. It’s like her other daughter.”

By the time firefighters arrived, Harris was unconscious and they had to carry her out. Minnie, the dog, managed to escape on her own and she wasn’t injured.

(Photo courtesy of KHOU-TV)